Dance-music producer Tim Simenon
has been producing music as Bomb
the Bass since the late ’80s, but when
the new millennium arrived, he was
ready for a break. After releasing Clear
in 1995, Bomb the Bass was mostly
dormant until 2008’s Future Chaos.

In between, he remixed and produced
other groups, including David
Bowie, Depeche Mode, and U2. But
after shelving the unfinished Future
Chaos for years, he finally decided to
get it done. “The fact that Future
Chaos was never finished was always a
dark cloud over my head,” Simenon
admits. “I just needed to clear my head
and get a life outside of making music
because I’d spent 10 to 12 years just
before that living in the studio.”

The break did him good. After
Future Chaos, his re-inspired musical
state spilled into creating his latest
album, Back to Light [!K7], and he flew
from Amsterdam to São Paulo to work
with techno producer Gui Boratto.

In São Paulo, Boratto played bass
guitar (later replacing parts with Moog
synth bass) over Simenon’s sampling
collages. Then they played synths—a
Roland MC-202 and SH-09, Moog
Little Phatty, and Arturia Moog
Modular V and Logic ES1 synth plugins—
and then they’d remove most of
the original samples.

A drummer named Cuca recorded
live drums for “some of the more ambient
stuff sitting behind the programmed
drums,” Simenon says, and
to give a dynamic lift to the choruses.
Simenon then took the live drum parts
from Pro Tools, created loops, and
tuned them to the electronic drums in
Ableton Live.

Phase two of the album was completed
in Amsterdam with co-producer
Paul Conboy, who also sang on four
tracks. The other singers—Kelley Polar,
Richard Davis, and The Battle of Land
and Sea—recorded vocals in their own
studios. But when Simenon and Conboy
received their tracks, they realized
there were more changes to be made
to the music.

“The backing tracks would always
need reworking so that they matched
the quality of what the singers delivered,”
Simenon says. “Normally, what
they’d send back would sound so good
that the backing tracks would sound
tame compared to what they just
added to it.”

“Blindspot,” for example, went
through multiple changes. “The vocal
line Paul had in the verses was just
killer, but the backing tracks always
sounded dodgy,” Simenon says. “Paul
and I spent a couple weeks looping the
verse parts and playing around with
different bass lines until we came up
with something that felt comfortable
against what he was singing.”

Then they pushed the sounds to the
next level. “When we got to a point
where we knew what the essence of a
track was, we’d re-record plug-in MIDI
parts using my handmade modular
synth, a Roland MC-202, Moog Little
Phatty, and the Minimoog,” Conboy
says. “I hate plug-in synths. They all
sound rubbish really—no character and
usually a horrible response controlwise.
I don’t mind using a few plug-in
effects on stuff, but all the virtual
synths are just toys.”

Conboy built his modular synth
using the Moog Modular format of a 5U
panel. “The process is fairly complicated,
but I built it all from scratch,” he
says. “I first built a Synthacon VCF and
a Polivoks VCF, then two oscillators
based loosely on the Moog, then a
bunch of VCAs and envelope generators.
It’s constantly evolving really and
will one day fill my entire house!”

His vocal-recording process is simpler:
He sings through an Oktava MK-
219, into a Neve-designed Amek Pure
Path Channel in a Box, and into a
Digidesign Mbox. “The Amek is the best
investment I ever made—really good
quality EQ, compressor, and preamp.”
Later, some vocals would get extreme
EQ treatment in Logic, with low-end
cuts to thin out the vocals. And backing
vocals were often hard-panned.

Phase three of the album was at
mixing engineer Fopper’s studio,
where they broke down the stems to
eight channels and ran them through
an old 1974 Polygram mixing desk.
They also got rid of all the reverb plugins
in Logic and replaced them with an
AKG spring reverb.

Finally, Simenon and Fopper bussed
the entire mix through a modified EQ
that Fopper had built from a Siemens
cinema amp, driving it for a harsh
sound, and then running it at low volume
underneath the regular mix. “So
we had this really noisy stereo mix of
the eight tracks just underneath the
eight tracks,” Simenon says. “It gave it
a nice bit of air around the whole mix.
If you muted it, the tracks sounded
skeletal, and when you pushed it back
in, the whole track just sounded like it
jelled really nicely.”